It’s been quite awhile since I had time to post, but I wanted to share an exciting update… my hometown of Portland, Oregon will be hosting the National Button Society’s annual convention this August! If you’re nearby, or can plan a trip, I hope you’ll join us at the show. I’ve been to three of the Oregon State Button Society shows, and they’re so interesting, from special card competitions to shopping with dozens of button dealers. The national convention should be amazing!

I’m happy to say that my friend and Button It Up contributor Diane Gilleland and I will be giving a talk on crafting with buttons, sharing plenty of visuals and ideas for using buttons in your sewing, patchwork, knitting, crochet, collage, and any other craft you enjoy. We’re already having a lot of fun putting our presentation together…

I’ll definitely be posting more often over here, I hope monthly at least, and sharing my favorite new and vintage button finds and projects to make. It’s been a busy couple of years, but I’ve really missed getting to write about buttons and share what I’m making with them. Thank you so much to everyone who’s followed the blog or asked when I might update again. I would love to hear what you’re making, too!

-Susan

PS: If you’re interested, I do post regularly at my main craft blog, West Coast Crafty, and would love to see you over there as well.

PS 2: If you’d like a signed copy of Button It Up, they are available on the shelf in the Orange Room at Powell’s City of Books!

I’ll be signing copies of Button It Up (plus a few copies of Bead Simple for good measure) from 1 to 2 on Saturday afternoon.

And from 2:30 to 3:30 on Saturday, Kristen Rask and I will be doing a super fun crafty demo together, Button Mania! You can make yourself some button hairclips or sewn accessories in your favorite colors — we’ll have all the stuff you need for both projects and you can wear your new fanciness home!

Hope to see you at Urban Craft Uprising this weekend… the organizers are nice enough to sell copies of Button It Up (and all the featured authors’ books) both days of the fair, so even though I’ll only be there on Saturday you can enjoy the button-ness (including a peek at Kristen Rask‘s new book Button + Stitch!) both days!

from the blog:We have a nice package of promotional items to give away. This includes a signed copy of Susan Beal’s Button It Up, Denyse Schmidt’s Quilt-It Kit, a yard of County Fair, Patchwork Promenade Print by Denyse Schmidt and a Summer of Making Poster. To win leave a comment on the blog, become a fan of Summer of Making on Facebook or mention us on your Facebook profile or blog. You will get one entry for each of these (maximum of 4). We will randomly select the winner June 21.

I’m so excited about this class. We’ll have four days to work on jewelry, beading and embellishment techniques of all types, a luxurious amount of time to make things! Bead + Button Jewelry meets Monday through Thursday, July 20-23 from 10-3 in a nice big classroom with natural light at PNCA — all the details are here.

from the website:In this hands-on class, students will learn and practice a range of beading, jewelry-making and embellishment techniques, including wirework, stringing, weaving, knotting, gluing, hand-sewing, and other craft methods. Bring in your own favorite pieces to design around, complementing them with vintage and new beads, buttons, findings, chain, fabric, and other materials from Susan’s collection.

Aside from the nuts and bolts of practical making, we’ll focus on color, balance, arrangements, and intuitive design – creating a collection of jewelry and other crafts that bring your treasures to life. With four days to work together, we’ll create a collection of instant favorites for gifts or for yourself, while building a strong foundation for designing future projects with your new skills.

The projects we create will reflect each student’s personal sense of style and other favorite elements – instead of a cookie-cutter approach, each designer will enjoy the flexibility to focus on what he or she prefers.

If you want to know more about any of the classes, you can download a syllabus for each one on its page at the Summer of Making site. And if you have any questions about mine in particular, please ask away over here!

One last thing: if you are interested in taking Bead + Button Jewelry, I would be thrilled to have some crafty friends in the class. If anyone who registers mentions that they read my blog or either of my book sites (or have checked out my flickr, or know me through Portland stuff) I will put together a special package of vintage beads and buttons as a thank-you! You can leave a comment here or just let me know the first day of class, and I’ll put something fun together with some of your favorite colors and styles and bring it for you to craft with the second day and beyond.

p.s. I’m cross-posting this announcement on West Coast Crafty and Bead Simple, so sorry for the exact repetition if you see it more than once, but since the class ties together techniques from both of my books, I’d like to spread the word in all directions!

Diane snapped some photos of the crafting going on at our Buttoning It Up demo at Maker Faire on Sunday!

She said it was a lovely time and that people made some very cute hairclips! She was also nice enough to snap a photo of my books and jewelry kits in the Maker Shed — so cool to see.

So great to get some peeks — thank you, Diane! You can see all of her photos here and read about some of her fantastical experiences on Craftypod.

I’m writing up a post about Summer of Making, which something else I’m very excited about, and will have lots more details about craft classes and a button giveaway soon, but for now here is the beautiful poster!

Diane will be leading the free half-hour Buttoning It Up workshop at 4pm on Sunday afternoon — all the details are here. I put together a whole box of colorful buttons and some extra bits and pieces for her to bring down to the event. Stop by and choose your favorites to make a set of crafty hairclips — you can embellish them with rhinestones, alphabet beads, or layer on more buttons if you like, too!

And if you are interested, you can get your own copy of Button It Up in the Maker Shed all weekend, too. Thank you so much to Diane and CRAFT: for their support of the book and their love of buttons!

There is so much amazing stuff going on at Maker Faire — along with the awesome Bazaar Bizarre craft fair, there are lots of make-and-take projects to check out. Some of the ones that sound especially fun to me are:

I wish I could be there myself (I’m already looking forward to next year) but I’ll be eagerly checking out flickr and the CRAFT: blog for colorful updates and details! Have fun, makers!

Next week I’m going to start up my Favorite Shops series again with some new button sources I especially love. Let me know if you have one to suggest, too, I’d love to share some favorites from other folks!

I had such a great time at Bolt on Saturday afternoon! Thank you so much to everyone who came by to hang out and talk buttons, make magnets, and eat lavender shortbread cookies.

This one is blurry but happy — it was so nice to get to talk about buttons with people who love them too.

Thanks to Chelsea‘s wonderful article about her family button collection, some folks brought their own canisters and jars of treasured buttons to show us…

…it was lovely to see them all.

A huge thank-you to Lee for taking these photos of the heirloom buttons, that was an incredible gift.

This amber color was so fresh and gorgeous — like it was brand-new instead of decades old.

This one was so exquisite in person, the details and faceting were spectacular.

Just lovely.

So, thank you so much to Gina, Amy and Julia for having me, to Lee for the spectacular pictures, to Andrew for wrangling our little pearl button so we could all hang out in the shop together, and of course to everyone who came by, it was such a treat to spend the afternoon with so many button enthusiasts!

And I will be on the AM Northwest show tomorrow, Tuesday 3/31 (on KATU 2 here in Portland from 9-10 am), showing how to make button hairclips from my book, and talking about the upcoming Handmade Nation premiere. You can see it live tomorrow morning (I think about 9:20, though that could change) and then the video will be on their website by Wednesday. So if you couldn’t make it to Powell’s and you’d like to make some hairclips, now is your chance!

Thanks so much to everyone who came to Powell’s Friday night! It was so much fun to see all the cool clips people made (not to mention getting to hear about the fantastical poker-chip buttons Ryan is planning for his upcoming trip to Vegas).

I read from the book and chatted about a few of my go-to shops and sources, and people shared some of their favorites too…

I also brought some of the projects from the book, and it was so nice to see them all out on the table together!

Then everyone got down to business: button hairclip-making. There were some really gorgeous ones in the mix, I loved seeing what people made!

A special thank-you to my awesome friends Caitlin, Sarah, and Diane, who helped me with every bit of the night, from setting things up to snapping pictures of it all. You can also check out some very nice posts from Diane and Sarah about the evening if you like! Last night was a bit of a blur to me (I have a sick little baby here at home, and it’s been a long week) so it was really nice to hear about it today from a not-me perspective, to tell you the truth.